CAMBRIDGE — Nancy Lee Kerr was a woman of strength, independence and intelligence, commanding respect from everyone who knew her. But there was a soft side to Nancy, a loving and generous nature she shared with her family and many friends.

Born the youngest of three in a well-off family, her father was a successful industrialist. Nancy’s mother died not long after giving birth to her, and her father, unable to cope with three young daughters, sent Nancy to live with a couple of maiden aunts on a farm outside of town. Hyla wonders what it must have been like for the elderly ladies to suddenly be given a baby to raise, but little Nancy was well cared for.

“She loved the farm,” said niece Hyla Somerville. In summer, the family would stay at their cottage on Puslinch Lake and Nancy often reminisced about canoeing across the lake to dances at Barbers Beach.

After graduating high school, Nancy left Cambridge for the University of Toronto where she completed a degree in physiotherapy and joined the army, hoping to serve overseas. It was not to be. Just as Nancy graduated the war ended. It seemed Nancy was determined to help soldiers anyway she could, so she moved to Montreal, joining the staff of the Queen Mary’s Veteran’s Hospital where she was soon promoted.

“She stayed over 30 years,” an admiring Hyla said. “She was second in command.”

Nancy, who never married, created quite a life for herself in Montreal, surrounding herself with a host of friends in her simple but comfortable apartment, entertaining often. “She had friends in the diplomatic service and they had brought her things from all over the world,” Hyla said.

Nancy also travelled, often on her own, and on major holidays she would board a train bound for Cambridge, her arms loaded with gifts and her fur coat wafting a delicious scent of perfume. Nancy, always stylish, played the part of the exotic auntie with great aplomb.

Hyla, who lives in Eastern Ontario, doesn’t know why her aunt returned to Ontario after retirement, moving to Kitchener, though other members of the family had started returning to the area. “Quebec was not English friendly,” Hyla said. “And she spoke excruciating French.”

Even in her senior years, Nancy never lost the spark that had driven her for so long.

“She ran her own life,” Hyla said. “She was fiercely independent. She kept up on everything. She was very well read, into highbrow things. She took The New Yorker magazine for as long as I knew her and she was a patron of the arts, Stratford Theatre, music.”

Nancy seemed to enjoy her nieces and nephews, though Hyla said “she didn’t do babies. Once you got to your teens, she was suddenly interested in you.”

Hyla describes her aunt as “the kind of woman whose life had to march in a very straight line. She had specific routines.”

Nephew Tim Tyler of British Columbia was very attached to his auntie.

“She was pretty cultured,” he said. “She did all the things you can do when you don’t have children.”

Nancy had inherited money from her father’s estate and she was very wise with her investments, though “she was fairly frugal” Tim said. He remembers her as “classy and elegant” and that when he was a child, Nancy was always travelling to Europe, Mexico, anywhere that inspired her. “She was always coming back from somewhere,” he said.

Nancy had led a rich and culture life, one filled with career success and love of family.

“She was a very interesting woman,” Tim said.

vhill@therecord.com